Was this the most remarkable Le Mans qualifying lap?

In the grand scheme of things, qualifying for the Le Mans 24 Hours has practically no bearing on the race outcome. Sure, a good performance is a morale-booster for the team and means a cleaner run for the opening stint compared to being mired in a pack, but things have a way of evening themselves out over 24 hours as reliability, freak occurrences and driver fatigue play a role. 

That being said, qualifying has thrown up plenty of memorable moments from Le Mans’ one lap kings. Kamui Kobayashi’s record-breaking 3m14.791s lap in 2017 is unlikely to be beaten for a very long time, coming at the peak of the LMP1 era before performance equalisation became de-rigeur in the top class now contested by the slower, heavier Hypercars. The Japanese has claimed a further three poles since then, but his record pales in comparison with that of Tomas Enge. 

The Czech’s Le Mans qualifying record is simply staggering. He managed pole position in the class known as LMGTS before its more familiar GT1 nomenclature every year between 2002 and 2006, adding another in 2010. But none are more special to Enge than his 2004 effort, coming the year after he’d won the GTS category with Peter Kox and Jamie Davies. 

The three-times grands prix starter for Prost in 2001 produced a 3m49.438s effort in Prodrive’s Ferrari 550 Maranello that was 0.312s faster than Oliver Gavin’s Corvette. Coming four hours after he’d crashed heavily at the Porsche Curves, as Autosport put it, the effort was “nothing short of sensational”.  

Enge had arrived at the track late on Prodrive boss David Richards’ private jet, having missed Wednesday’s running including night practice and qualifying due to a pre-arranged Formula 3000 test. In the final practice before qualifying, Enge was completing long runs on race tyres when he crashed “stupidly” in the Porsche Curves. When the car he shared with Kox and Alain Menu got back to the pits, Enge says, it was “quite badly damaged front, rear, side”.  

“It was not a carbon chassis, it was still an aluminium chassis, so we had a welder there,” recalls Enge, today an enthusiastic competitor in domestic rally events. “We had people changing whole bits of cars and they started to work straight away. The guys were pushing like crazy. I was with my head like this [in hands].” 

A shunt at the Porsche Curves meant hurried repairs were required for qualifying that evening

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While repairs were ongoing, qualifying had begun in earnest. Gavin had roared to the top of the timesheets in his C5.R. Enge was convinced that the damage would be too severe to get his car out again, only to be told by technical director George Howard-Chappell that he would be getting back in the car when it was ready.  

“I said, ‘George, why are the guys so pushing? We’re not going out, are we?’” Enge remembers. When Howard-Chappell set him right, Enge responded that he didn’t feel he should be the man to qualify in light of his earlier faux pas. But Howard-Chappell was having none of it. 

Enge says: “He looked at me straight, with his massive hands on my head, and he said ‘look, we are here to do our job, you are here to do your job, so get into the car and you’re going to do the qualifying run like you always do. We believe [in] you, so you do it’. And I was, ‘Amazing, he is not angry!’”  

“The car was hastily repaired with minutes of the session remaining,” reported Autosport. But it wasn’t completely right, as Enge would soon discover on a sighter lap with a set of soft tyres before coming into the pits for a set of Michelin qualifiers.  

“I explained [to Howard-Chappell] everything and he was like ‘shit, if I would hear that, I wouldn’t have let you go out’. So I said, ‘well, that’s how it is’ and then we go to the race” Tomas Enge

“On the Mulsanne Straight, the front was jumping,” says Enge, who reckons today the front splitter hadn’t been properly fixed. “Then I go through Porsche Curves and I had massive grip in the front, so I could go one gear higher because normally you have understeer there.  

“I came in and I was talking over the radio, ‘George, I’m not feeling really comfortable because the car is jumping quite a lot on all straights over 280km/h, but in the Porsche Curves its quite okay’.”  

But his car was refuelled, qualifying tyres fitted and dropped off the jacks without any heed of his feedback. It was then Enge realised he’d pressed the wrong button on his steering wheel and the radio message hadn’t been transmitted. 

“They didn’t hear what I was saying!” grimaces Enge. “And I was already pulling out of the pitlane. So I said, ‘okay, I have to do it’. So I went out, one qualifying lap… 

Enge made his one lap effort count despite significant car flaws, allowing him to lead the GTS pack when the race began on Saturday

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“On the straights, the front was going ‘doof, doof, doof’. But then in the Porsche Curves instead of going fourth gear, I was going fifth gear, the car was 20km/h faster than normally. First sector I wasn’t fastest, second sector I wasn’t fastest, but third sector I was by over one second faster than the Corvettes so overall I beat them. Fastest laptime, checkered flag.”  

When Enge relayed his feedback in person to Howard-Chappell, the engineer was astonished.  

“I explained him everything,” chuckles Enge, “and he was like ‘shit, if I would hear that, I wouldn’t have let you go out’. So I said, ‘well, that’s how it is’ and then we go to the race.” 

Yet as is so often the way at Le Mans, qualifying heroics counted for little in the race, despite Enge, Menu and Kox recovering from the Czech’s early off on the same oil that had claimed the Audis of Allan McNish and JJ Lehto to build up a six-lap cushion. The Corvette Gavin shared with Jan Magnussen and Olivier Beretta required repairs when the race-leading Audi of former Prodrive man Davies clouted Magnussen at the Ford chicane.  

But a wheel-baring issue on the Ferrari meant its advantage was soon dashed. Although double British Touring Car Championship-winner Menu emerged from the pits on the same lap as Magnussen, the car still wasn’t sorted and required more repairs that dropped it to an unrepresentative fourth in class at the flag.  

It serves as a reminder that qualifying counts for little at Le Mans. But Enge, who recorded a best finish in the 24 Hours of fourth with the Lola-Aston Martin LMP1 in 2009, will always have the memories from his unheralded banzai lap with a less-than-perfect car.

Enge jokes with rivals Magnussen and Gavin about his last-gasp pole effort, but it was the Corvette drivers who had the last laugh come the race

Photo by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images